CHAPTER 9 "Ensuring Usability"
Shannon Claybaugh and Kevin Pagel
MAIN POINTS
- Usability focuses on the needs of the user as it relates to the design.
- Texts affecting usability can be written, graphic, and oral (307).
- Documents that usability pertains to include but are not limited to: Tech reports, language and visual displays, and Web sites.
- Technical Reports:
- The five critical principles that usability is applied to are: Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Error Recovery and Satisfaction.
- Learnability: How easily can people learn and use the product.
- Efficiency: How productive people are using a the product.
- Memorability: How easy is it to memorize the product from one use to the next.
- Error Recovery: How errors are made using the product and how easy is is to fix.
- Satisfaction: How satisfied are the people using the product.
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- People take longer to learn complex tasks.
- Usability testing is used to determine whether or not the document is understandable.
- A long term purpose for usability testing is to have historical documents to refer back to during product development (310).
- A short term purpose is to find solutions to problems or concerns before delivering a document.
- These four things are considered when determining which test to preform: Cognition, Perception, Affect, and Performance and behavior.
- Cognition: How are users thinking about the text?
- Perception: How do users understand the text?
- Affect: How do the users respond to the text?
- Performance and Behavior: What do users actually do with the text and product?
- These limitations can affect Usability: Test participants, Test situation, Test techniques, and Testing procedures.
- Test Participants: People who reflect the needs and attitudes of the actual end users of the product.
- Test Situation: Testing doesn't guarantee a communications usefulness. In order to generalize the a specific situation you must take into consideration a variety of different situations in which the communication will be used.
- Test Techniques: Test techniques must be appropriate at various stages of text development. Different stages require different procedures. Your goal should be to design appropriate testing for each stage of development.
- Testing Procedures: Testing procedures can also affect results. However, with effective planning, implementation, and evaluation, testing can provide more specific and useful information than other forms of feedback.
- The benefits of usability testing outweigh the time and cost.
- The three main kinds of usability testing are: text-based, expert-based, and user-based.
- Text-based testing includes: The Flesch Reading Ease, and The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. However, these tests are not fool proof, because they don't look at the word's understandability, only its syllables.
- Expert-based testing includes several different types of reviews (316).
- User-based testing is reviews by the intended audience of the document.
- Before testing, one needs to consider the following about the test: Goals, Critically, Constraints, Schedule, Involvement, Timing, Goodness of fit, Ease of use, Usable form, and Updating.
- Goals: Establish the goals for your testing. What do you want to find out? Ways to reduce time, and increase accuracy.
- Critically: Assess the importance of the text you plan to test and decide what kind of testing feedback you need.
- Constraints: How much time you have to conduct the test and how many participants do you have for the test.
- Schedule: Make time for all the tests you plan to do. Establish a schedule that if possible, includes testing of different kinds as a ongoing part of the project.
- Involvement: Explain the purpose and procedures to everyone who is helping conduct the test so they understand the goals and cooperate with the testing.
- Timing: Test products and texts at various points in the development cycle, including the initial stages. Feedback is vital for test results to become part of the design process.
- Goodness of fit: The test procedures should be in line with your specific goals.
- Ease of use: Test procedures must be easy for the participants to understand and testers to facilitate.
- Usable form: Manage the production of test data so that usable results are achieved.
- Updating: Determine how the test results will be used as part of the development and revision process.
- A good test incorporates text-based, expert-based, and user-based testing at some point in one test.
- These steps are involved in the testing process:
- Analyze the rhetorical situation
- Find participants
- Strategize
- Find a location
- Explain to participants what is expected of them
- Report
- Make sure your document is accessible, even for people with disabilities.
- Consider these things with accessibility:
- Equitable use
- Flexibility
- Simplicity
- Perceptible information
- Error
- Low physical effort
- Approachability
KEY TERMS
USABILITY: Documents need to be comprehensible for the audience in "complex situations".
USABILITY TESTING: "A structured process that gathers information about specific use from people similar to the intended users" (310).
STRUCTURED TESTING: Planned questions and tasks
UNSTRUCTURED TESTING: Feedback without specifics
CONCURRENT TESTING: When you get feedback from the audience as they are reading
RETROSPECTIVE TESTING: Feedback after the audience is done reading it
ACCESSIBILITY: Consider the access to information as it pertains to mobility, hearing, vision, and cognition
21 comments:
Usability is significant in almost all of the technical documents available today. This is such an important aspect of creating any such document. As our Kids Against Hunger volunteer group creates instructions that will be used by actual packaging volunteers, it will be important for us to remember to, in a matter of speaking, test and retest the information we provide. If we miss a step or make our instructions difficult to understand, we have not provided an adequate service. This chapter gives several helpful hints to make sure the information we provide in any technical document is accurate and usable.
Chapter 9 is very well outlined. It has many vocabulary words that are important to the chapter. This chapter made me think of things I didn't ever pay attention to. I think testing is a good idea and making sure it is creditable. Also knowing the audience being tested can be crucial. I was in a testing sample for make up once having teenage girls test out different make up marketing techniques and it was helpful for the company to see what teenage girls were interested in. This chapter was very helpful in making decisions on testing samples and having the right creditability.
This chapter is important because if your document does not have good usability it was a waste of your time, because there are not a lot of people who are able to get anything from it. This chapter says that it is important to place user concern over the text features when developing your design. I agree with this because your text features may be great but if people are not able to use it or understand it they will likely not use it. I also liked the testing section because it gave some really great ideas to keep in mind when designing or writing anything.
Usability really is important. Literally right before I began reading the blog, I was trying to program a universal remote to my television. However, due to the ridiculously organized directions, it took me forever to figure it out. With a complex process, it is essential to have a manual that’s easy to understand. I think this chapter really outlined what I want in an owner’s manual, or any other manual for that matter. I think if this manual had been put to the “test” it would’ve failed, miserably. If a technical writer was unable to condense a lot of professional jargon down to some simple, step by step directions, no one would be able to do things for themselves.
Usability in documents is very important. If I were to write a paper with many technical terms that would confuse the average reader, the reader would most likely not take any of the information to use somewhere else. If the terms were explained thoroughly or other terms were used in place, a better understanding would be gained. Like an instruction manual for an item of some kind. If a person mixes the steps up, there is no way the task could be completed in a certain manner. Reading this chapter definitely helped me realize that if people don't understand your instructions, nothing happens.
The first thing that came to my mind when reading this chapter is direction that come with products to be assembled. Sometimes you get directions that get you where you need to be and you have no problems. Sometimes you spend more time figuring out the instructions than you do assembling or seting up. They do not understand that they need to use usability in there directions. They need to have it set up for all different people and made to be understood by all different levels of expertise.
Usability in documents is very important. If a document or technical writing is missing just one step or there is a wrong word in place the whole document would be pretty much worthless. documents have to be detailed enough and have enough depth so that anybody can perform the task without having to have a specfic knowledge in a particular area it allows people from all walks of life to perform detailed taskd in areas that they are not familar with like working on cars or building things from wood.
Usability is an important way of communicating to a user, ways of operating and assembling things in a shortest time possible. Usability can be found in all discipline and professional. In engineering, usability can be found on how to operate machinery, in science lab usability can be found on how to run an experiment by using particular equipment and lastly we see efficiency of usability in an airplane on how to use flotation and oxygen mask during an emergency.
Usability should be easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to access the information and error recovery when something goes wrong. Before usability is put into practice testing should be done to prevent errors.
In all events, everyone needs to learn how to read directions and to go by them. Chapter nine extenuates the importance of making sure the directions are complete and accurate. Also all directions need to have them accessible for everyone. During other classes, I have gave speeches on how I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and if you miss a step, it is not quite a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It might turn out different if you did it and forgot a step.
This chapter is layed out very well and talks mainly about usability. Usability is basically making it easy for the reader to follow and understand whether than using big words and complex situations when your dealing with little kids. If you do that they will not be able to understand what your tlaking about, but if you were tlaking to a few sophistacated people they could comprehend anything you put down no matter how you word it.
Chapter 9 is set up very well. I like the bold face terms that go into detail they explain the terms nicely. This chapter will help the group I am in, Kids Against Hunger because we are working with them in doing signage and we will have to set instructions up for whom our ‘audience’ is. We might think that we are explaining a step perfectly but someone else could be confused by what we are saying. This chapter will help us decide what we have to do to make instructions for all types of groups.
This chapter did a good job of describing many of the processes consumers go through each day. Automotive manuals are a good example of usability. Recently the government has implimented a law that forces auto manufactures to install(TPMS)tire pressure monitoring systems. Some manufactures have done a good job of documenting usable instructions on how to reset the sytem. For many of the new systems car manufactures have failed in their usabiity. Making hard to follow steps to reset the system leaves many unsatisfied consumers. Apparently testing their system wasn't something they spent much time on.
Usability and learnability are some of the things that we should all consider when making a new document for people to read. I could think of a couple of things that I could write about that most people would read and then not gain anything from it because of the way that it was worded. If I could make a document that was clear and understandable by all it will make more sense to the person that is reading it. This is something that we should all keep in mind when working on documents.
Usability is important to any document. I can use the OLPC start guide from their wiki as an example. Every thing relating to the XO laptop is very structure and explains in simple language so anybody can understand. The step-by-step structure was very detail and easy to follow. The use of texts and graphics really help people from many type of learner. Each program is explain very well with photos relating to the subject. Also, the graphical interface of the XO laptop is well-thought out. It is appropriate for both beginner and advance users and its intended purpose the children of developing countries.
Usability is a great thing to keep in mind and I think this chapter does a great job defining it. For an example, a couple of months ago I had to put together this “cheap” computer desk from Wal-Mart for a family friend. I began putting it together without the instructions and there were so many pieces it seemed to be impossible. I started reading the instructions and they were seriously pretty complex. It turned out to be alright for me and I got the desk assembled in a short time. I thought to myself, how a person would assemble this with little or no education. It would be nearly impossible. They need to keep the directions in easy terms.
I never thought usability being such important tool for writing probably because I really didn’t understand what it meant, but now that I do it makes more sense. Chapter 9 explains why usability is so important and one of the many things it came to my mind was the Gantt the word project document that we are working in class. This is the first time I ever use this program and honestly did not know how to use it but when I faced a problem I would go and use the help tab, and there they where every single step I had to follow to solve the problem or the unknown.
Usability is extremely important with just about any profession. For every presentation or idea you are about to present, you will need to make sure that it is understandable to your audience and that it is easily comprehendable. Testing the usability of your presentation etc. is important because if it has low usability, it would be a waste of your time and your audiences time and could potentially damage your reputation.
I think user ability is huge especially in my area of study. In my area you have to get across what the person needs to be doing and also how many times they need to be doing this, the goals they need to meet and when to get a recheck to see if there is progress. I learned from one therapist that it takes time to absorb everything the therapist is saying and the person only walks away with remembering one third of what was said. So I think making sure they know what they need to do, and how to do it will help the memorability, the recovery and satisfaction of the exercises. How they respond to the exercises is the effectiveness of the drills. At the end of each session make sure to go over that they remember what was said and understand it by asking them what they are asked of.
Usabiltiy is very important when writing documents. The reader needs to be able to comprehend exactly what is meant. Its very helpful in the steps they provide to make sure that your document is usable for a varity of audiences or readers.
Usabilities is huge in the world of retail. Particularly for the websites. Websites need to be usable so that customers can smoothly maneuver it and make their purchases. Working at the bookstore we have messed with the usability of our website and made sure that it was easy for students and parents could get on, figure out the drop down menus understand the content of the pages and successfully order their books.
It is important for web page designers to make sure that the page is usable for the reader or the person viewing the page. Tabs and links should be clear and defined so that people know where they're going when they click on something. Also, the text needs to be easy for people to read. In other words, give the text and its background colors that contrast.
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